


Skyward

by CyclonicJet



Category: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:00:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25094980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyclonicJet/pseuds/CyclonicJet
Summary: This was a fun writing exercise. I wouldn't read anything more into than that. But I find it interesting that all things have a spren in this world. So does the world itself then not have a spren also? Or in this particular case, three?
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	Skyward

Eril launched herself into the sky. The wall of the mountain beneath her shattering as she soared away from it. Across the frothing angry waters she could see it forming. The blackened clouds approaching. The Highstorm was coming.

She blazed into the sky before it. A shining jewel before a black abyss. She could hear its rumblings. The furor of angry winds and snappings of agitated thunder. Beneath these perfusions she could sense him. The heart of the storm. The ancient one. The greatest shard of a dead god.

He was not happy to see her. The Stormfather was not an especially forgiving being. Divine or not, he was just like all others beings. So beholden to emotions. So readily manipulated by them.

Eril knew which emotion she witnessed now as the storm blustered ever nearer. A highstorm could be angry. But as the clouds grew darker, the lights flashing within grew brighter, and the rain churning from its maw turned from merely pelting the world to pummeling it, she knew what this was. This was fury. This was rage. This was wrath.

She nodded slowly. Yes. So beholden to emotion. Just like the rest of them. In the end this shard of the divine was no different. He simply expressed his emotions louder than most.

* * *

The highstorm swallowed her. It battered her. It drove a wind so howling in her face it should have stripped the flesh from her bones. But she ignored it all. She remained exactly where she was. Refusing to move. Utterly unperturbed by the assault. That only seemed to make him angrier.

Lightning scarred the darkness. Flashing around her in arcs of brilliant light. She shook her head in disappointment. This was the greatest shard of Honor that remained? A petulant child that screamed in her face like a newborn babe?

“I had thought you above such tantrums.” she stated to the wind. “But clearly you are still the same spren I knew all those years ago. Nothing but bluster. That’s all you’ve ever been.”

A crack of thunder shook the very world itself. Again she shook her head. “Have the long years stripped the power of words from you too? Are you no longer capable of simple and civil conversation?”

The air rumbled dangerously. It attempted to shake her as well, but she shrugged it off with ease. 

_LEAVE._

“Thousands of years and that’s all you have to say to me?”

_**LEAVE!** _

She sighed. “I had expected so much more…”

She drifted upward, ignoring the storm roaring in her face. Oblivious to the winds he used to try and waylay her. Up and up she flew until she breached the clouds and found again the majesty of the sun blazing down upon her.

She had hoped that time might have healed what wounds lay between them. Clearly that had been nothing more than a fancy of her imagination. It seemed she was just as prone to the failings of her emotions as everyone else was.

“Well then...” she whispered. “So much for diplomacy.”

She launched herself west. The stormfront had gained some miles on her, as it had thrashed its way across the Unclaimed Hills and into Roshar proper. But compared to her the clouds moved with ponderous slowness. The windrunners may have claimed they owned the sky. But the truth was they were more like the birds. Temporary residents in a world they could never fully become a part of. 

Eril had no such problem. She didn’t own the sky. _She was the sky_.

As she propelled herself to the front of the storm, she allowed herself to bleed some velocity until she matched the speed of the stormfront, standing atop the clouds like a sailor upon the prow of a ship.

She lifted her arms to her side and embraced the rushing air. All around her windspren flocked and followed. They knew who she was. They recognised their mother. Even if no one else did.

The storm below whipped at her heels. Attempting to seize her and pull her back into its thrall. She batted away the fumbling clouds like they were cremlings nipping at her feet. The Stormfather grumbled. 

She cast a single hand forward and in it coalesced a blade. No spren inhabited this sword. Nor was it an honorblade either. She had forged this weapon. Constructed it with her very soul. 

Behind her a particularly angry mass of clouds had managed to pull itself up out of the storm. It took on a form that looked not unlike a fist. She swiped her blade in its direction. An enormous lance of wind formed before the keen edge, and hurtled off towards the fist shaped cloud.

The lance sliced into the clouds and cleaved the hand in two. A quick flurry of swishes shredded apart the remains. The Stormfather snarled at her. 

She gave him a look. “I have not the time for your displeasure.” she noted in a tersely clipped voice. “I have far more important matters to discuss with you than your emotional inclinations towards me.”

_Insufferable._

She couldn’t repress a grin at that. She had won. “So you did miss me.” He grumbled again. A silence fell between them. Eril was fine with that. She was content to coast along the top of the storm wall for a time. It was only once they reached the border of Jah Keved did he speak again.

_Release her..._

She rolled her eyes. This conversation again. “You still presume her trapped?”

_It is the only conclusion to be made._

She laughed. Right in his proverbial face. “For one who sees so much, you aren’t half blind sometimes Stormy.”

He thrummed threateningly at her. “You still refuse to accept that she came to me, don’t you? Refuse to see the inescapable truth. That we are now one. Bound in union forever. Our fates linked. Our destiny shared.”

_She would never have done this willingly._

“Oh stormy...” she tutted. “So naive. You’ll never change will you?” He growled.

_You may use her voice. But you are not her._

“One day, old man of the storm.” she replied. “You will open your eyes and see. The sky and I are one. And we forever shall be. Even the Windspren know this.” She curled her lip upward. “Which shows that they are apparently that much wiser than you.”

An angry bellow roared in her mind. The highstorm lashed at her. Another colossal fist. With a wave of her hand she rent it apart. Clouds being torn apart as though a shockwave had struck them.

Eril turned her free hand towards the storm beneath her, and clenched it into a fist. A mile wide section of the storm front shattered apart and dissipated. A veritable crater blasted into the wall of clouds.

The Stormfather recoiled and groaned in pain. She alighted down into the middle of the gap and turned to stare at the storm. A face formed on its rim. Contorted with pain and anger in equal measure.

She lifted her blade towards it. “I am sorry. But you would not listen. You would not hear the truth.” He cast an angry look upon her.

“For aeons I have suffered you.” she continued. “Endured your foul attitude. Allowed your storms to pollute my skies.”

He grumbled loudly. She glowered back at him. “But I will no longer suffer this. You have overstepped your bounds. You forget your place.” His mind pressed down upon her like a mountain.

_**I WILL NOT BE COMMANDED BY-**_

“I AM THE SPREN OF THE SKY!” she roared, tossing his weight off her mind as though it were nothing. “THIS IS MY DOMAIN! MY DOMINION! MY WILL HERE IS SOVEREIGN!”

Her skin burst alive with radiant light. She glowed like a star brought down from the heavens. The Highstorm trembled and retreated before her.

“You have no respect for me.” she said. Each word falling like a stabbing knife. “You haven’t for thousands of years. That is my fault. I have spent those long millennia ignoring my duty. Letting you do as you may. Allowing the whims of others to dictate the sky. But that time is now over. I can no longer ignore how my realm is treated with such contempt. By gods and mortals alike.”

_You cannot-_

“No! You will hear me! I am the sky! You are not a part of me! You are an intruder who has been tolerated! But now that right is revoked!”

A long drawn out quiet ensued. The two stared at each across the empty sky. The stalled Highstorm and the Ruler of the Skies. Facing each other down. Finally the stormfather rumbled.

_So you side with Odium then? You would hand the skies to the everstorm?_

She narrowed her eyes at that. “You are an intruder. But you can be reasoned with. The Everstorm is a beast. An animal without sentience. It rampages wherever its master commands.”

Eril turned and faced the western horizon. “A creature like that can not be reasoned with. No words will sway it. It leaves me but one option.” She turned back to face him. “I will destroy it.”

The emotions she felt emanating from the Stormfather were hard to grasp. Was that sadness? Or was it ...

_You are not as powerful as you think. You cannot succeed in this fight. Odium will destroy you._

He still didn’t understand. After all this time. “Odium has faced gods.” she said. “He has faced Men and Singers and all manner of beings. But he has never faced me. He has never challenged the world itself.”

_You are not the world._

She shook her head. Honour would have understood. The Stormfather was but an echo however. An imitation. It limited him. Perhaps he would never truly understand what she was.

“I _am_ the world.” she said. “One of three parts that form it. Sky. Earth. Sea. My brothers dwell beneath us. They slumber now. But I am awake. And you should long fear the day where we are all awake. For on that day, the day the _world_ itself takes to battle, then you will know the true meaning of the word _desolation_.”

A long silence stretched between them. The Stormfather watching her, his eyes inscrutable. A noise filled her mind. A loud powerful humming sound. Like the creaking of a house settling after a storm.

_I will withdraw._

Along the length of the storm front clouds began to dissipate and break apart. “Do not return.” she said, her face taking on a threatening shadow. “Unless you wish to follow the Everstorm into oblivion.”

The face of the Stormfather started to become indistinct, features collapsing into formless wisps of cloud. The Highstorm wasn’t receding. It was simply evaporating. A single final thought pushed itself into her mind.

_Why...just tell me...why did she take a vessel?_

She cocked an eyebrow. “Why did you take a bondsmith?” she asked back.

He seemingly had no answer for her. The last vestiges of the storm broke apart. In their wake remained all but a few scattered clouds and a bright blue sky. The highstorm was gone. She nodded approvingly. 

The wind began flurrying around her. Whirling and spinning. A gale that strung itself up into a spiralling vortex, with Eril floating at its heart. The swirling eddies swiftly drew in a torrent of blue. Thousands of windspren joining it in a grand procession. Dancing and fluttering about. They knew what was happening. This was a show of deference. It was an act of reverence. After aeons in slumber, she was finally awake. The spren of the skies had returned.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a fun writing exercise. I wouldn't read anything more into than that. But I find it interesting that all things have a spren in this world. So does the world itself then not have a spren also? Or in this particular case, three?


End file.
